The GFF 2020 jury will identify three winners each to receive awards in the following areas of innovation: fashion product design, concept and materials & embellishment. Meet the nominees below!
MATERIAL
Francesca CuozzoI, UAD Academia Della Moda
I started by analysing the trends of the present season and the future season too, and what I was able to observe is: the revival of leather, animal prints, neutral colours and strong concepts that put their accent on women.
Therefore, considering all these things, the decision I made was to cover “my women” of reptile leather: crocodiles, snakes and exotic animals, all mixed to fur (and fur coats), and to skinny jumpsuit made of bovine genuine leather. Following my initial inspiration, on exotic animals, I have decided to inspire my collection specifically on reptiles, so my message for the Fashion World is: there is no need to kill innocent animals, their scales and their skin can be reproduced by manual manipulation of fabrics and not through expensive machines and chemical processes.
Minh Yew Amie Kwok, Lasalle College of The Arts Singapore
Coral Bleaching - an event that occurs due to global warming, destroys the entire global coral reef eco-system and this could lead to the disappearance of the coral reef. Taking this disastrous process as the inspiration source for the collection, the textiles and details are generated and developed based on the structure and texture of the coral and its skeleton, with white being the core colour scheme. The collection is approached critically and conceptually to raise awareness about the current global issue that we are facing - climate change, with sustainability being the crucial matter, especially in the fashion industry.
Xie Zimeng, Sichuan Institute of Fine Arts
In the future cyberpunk dark world, darkness makes people pay more attention to light and shadow, and gradually forms a unique aesthetic and demand for light and shadow. My design concept is mainly based on the vision of the future world. In the future, people will cause irreversible impact on the earth due to various factors. In tens of thousands of assumptions, my design is aimed at the formation of "polar night" phenomenon due to environmental pollution in the future. At this time, people's demand for light must be the first. In such a world, our demand for the role of clothing is not only to cover the body and keep warm; it is particularly important to let clothing itself become a light source to illuminate itself. In order to show their own personality, the requirements for clothing are not only light sources. The presentation of light and shadow on clothing has become a new aesthetic standard.
Hui Qiong Cheng, Chongqing University of Education
The materials and fabrics of this design work adopt a variety of materials and process methods. The multi-layer stacking of materials and the rendering of fabrics with different colors produce rich layered effects and changeable effects. The works use a variety of materials, such as cotton, wool felt, wool, leather, silk, TPU, metal, waste goods, rubber, etc. These materials are spliced and fused. It also combines the traditional embroidery technology, the new three-dimensional computer embroidery technology and the three-dimensional printing technology. It shows the possibility of comprehensive performance of clothing. Clothing effect is rich, diverse, coordinated and unified. It inherits the tradition and is innovative, reflecting the diversity and integration of culture in the current era.
Carla Boré, LISAA Mode Paris
The idea behind this project came to me during the making of the concept of my collection “In my Dystopic Garden”. It has been a desire to reconnect with nature, to study shapes, the surfaces, the natural biological phases such as morphogenesis. This nature is mystical, psychedelic, and submerges in my universe through a futurist prism that just amazes all around. This vegetal world that we know would have mutated into a universe that was born under acid rain. Even more abundant, this nature int he end would have helped civilization to survive. This theme brings us to reconnect with the fragility and the beauty that is the link we have to nature itself.
CONCEPT
Carla Corpas, IED Barcelona
Each being is a cog part of a great machinism that is the industry, the industry is constantly creating at an unsustainable rate envisioning a future where the artificial makes its way and the artisan is forgotten. Due to the climatic emergency it is necessary to reconstruct our point of view on fashion. The future can be linked to the past, enriching it even more and thus making fashion production a sustainable, efficient and ethical activity. Kooyaniskatsi is an explosion of all the sensations that the wild man feels during his exodus from the countryside to the city, the artisan claiming his place, his ever-present land has left a mark on his being. Traditional female silhouettes that carve bodies that feel subjected to constant stress, volumes that suffocate and that suddenly burst into a cry for freedom.
Heron Robinson, College for Creative Studies
Astro/Black is a representative of three of the main themes found across the Afro Futurist Art Movement. The three themes include that of water, alienation, and reclamation. Water represents both the erasure and the existence of black people and our histories. Alienation figures that black people were the first aliens on Earth due to the Trans-Atlantic slave trade through the Middle Passage. That is in being forcibly removed from our homeland to the Americas. Alienation’s other aspect is in the utilization of black people as a tool to perform labor and to extract value from. Reclamation as a theme is in taking back what was taken from us as a people, our histories. It is both about recollecting the past and creating a new future. It is about being unapologetically black in a world dominated by the ideals of white supremacy.
Sarah Mair, AMD Akademie Mode & Design
The collection The New Nomad focuses on the question of what life and society could look like in the year 2096. The failure of humanity is unequivocal. Many factors show us that our present way of life, won‘t be possible in the future any more. Already today, in 2020, several negative consequences for the world‘s population and the environment are visible. Global warming, resulting into climate extremes, pollution, human exploitation and destruction of nature, wars and consumer behavior are just some of them. The fictional story of The New Nomad points out a possible dystopia that forces the people to adopt a nomadic lifestyle. To demonstrate the above-mentioned issues, the concept is based on sustainability. The goal of the gender neutral collection is to create avant-garde fashion, in which all materials are 100% upcycled. The whole collection is made out of used sails and climbing ropes.
Jing Wen Zhang, Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology
The inspiration comes from the travel equipment and luggage of the characters during the annual Spring Festival travel. The Spring Festival is the most important festival of the year in China. No matter how far away from your family, you always want to be with them on New Year's Eve. Migrant workers returning home for the Lunar New Year holiday are the main part of the Lunar New Year travel rush. They wear heavy clothes and carry luggage. Inspired by the characters returning home during the Spring Festival travel, the work analyzes and investigates the characteristics of the travel equipment and luggage of the Spring Festival travel army.
Felicia Agatha, Lasalle College of the Arts
Climate change can be regarded as one of the greatest challenges facing the world today. As climate change reshapes our environment, human ingenuity will be tested and driven to create innovations to survive. Innovations after innovations have been rapidly changing our life as designers and engineers are trying to tackle challenges of the future, including fashion. Today’s collaborative contexts have facilitated fashion to embrace technology.
This opens up areas for the use of science and technology is essential to create new materials and clothes that are better suited for the climate in the future. This project aims to create a new textile that can mimic the skin’s temperature-regulating mechanism as a way to adapt to the planet’s rapid warming. The new textile will be developed taking biomimicry as a methodology for reconsidering textile materials as second skin for fashion. During the project, the new textile will be further investigated considering the best material combinations and alternatives to create new textiles for fashion.
PRODUCT
Giulia Barbieri, Istituto Modartech
The idea starts from "Prada Mode", a traveling club that takes place once per year where artists, writers and designers creatively address global issues such as integration and diversity. Through my project I wanted to address the issue of multiculturalism and the fruitful coexistence of a plurality of cultures and ideas, and I did it through history. Making my cultural plurality coexist that has been possible in the past and could still be so is my goal. I drew my inspiration from the Harlem of the early twentieth, where different kind of art, music, fashion and ethnicity coexisted together; where the very first black artists and writers arose; which lived through the age of Prohibition and that of the speakeasies; the same place where you could listen to the devil's music or you could see the flappers, extravagant girls dancing in the ballrooms. I'm convinced that Art in its various form was for Harlem and it's inhabitants an expression of "Diversity".
Here is what LOOK OVER represents: “human identity”; respect for the environment; enhancement of craftsmanship; regard for new technologies; freedom and uniqueness. A mix and match of fabrics and patterns where checks play the main role.
Amineh Ahmed, College for Creative Studies
Arabesque is a six-piece accessories collection inspired by the role Muslim women play within their society. The collection delves deep into the suppressed identity and individuality of Muslim women, making them invisible to society at large. These issues only become more apparent when the women begin to speak out. A young Muslim woman is targeted if she goes to school; she is jailed if she drives a car; and if her opinion is voiced, she is assaulted both physically and verbally. All aspects of her life were predetermined, whether it be the clothes she wore or her future aspirations in life. Arabesque explores the dichotomy between religion and culture, asking what would happen if women in these societies stood up, stood out and took back their identities
Zi – Lvn Huang, Shih Chien University
Feminist psychoanalyst Chodorow once suggested that there is a "double identification process" relationship between mother and daughter, that is, when women grow up, one party must be similar to the mother to obtain their own female identity, but at the same time, they are eager to learn differentiation to achieve self-growth makes women feel inner conflicts and contradictions in their relationships.
My mother and I have a great conflict due to the difference of generations. In order to understand the reason behind the conflict more deeply, I began to discuss the psychological aspects of Possessive, Control freaks and Emotional blackmail ... etc. Feelings are transformed into printing inspiration. For example, irregular lines like neuroticity, three-dimensional embossed heart-shaped surface tissue represent pressure and distortion, and lines like gradient electromagnetic waves are what I feel the mother's clamor for children. Color selection uses strong contrasting colors and high brightness, high chroma contrasting dark shades, and even highlights the use of fluorescent colors to explain the mother's non-negligible and unreasonable jumping logic.
Rebar Aziz, Pforzheim University School of Design
Fashion was and is more than just clothes to me. It reflects social evolution and social sense. For me as a designer fashion is the visible expression of an inner attitude. I understand fashion as an all-embracing creation. As a symbiosis of clothing, jewellery, accessory and staging. Due to my studies of mechanical engineering, I am fascinated by technical elements and refinements. Not interested in just ordinary clothing, I’d rather like to explore a field in which so textile fuses with hard metal. Bodies and clothing evolve from themselves and artificially expand their possibilities.
Jewellery serves me therefore as an ability to remove the boundaries of the in other respects limited body and clothing language. To merge the sensuality of textiles with the functionality and the multiple possi- bilities of technology seems to me as an exciting way, especially in times of increasing digitization and mechanization. At the same time the traditional cra of tailoring is important to me: the poetry of hand-made and unique pieces, distinguishing themselves from the mass market of “fast fashion“ by their special handwriting and quality. To create clothing with value and doing so to find ways to a more sustainable consumption. For me, the future of fashion lies in the fusion of these two areas.
Alessia di Secli, Accademia Costume & Moda
In my project Noeud, tradition and craftsmanship represent the starting point for the design of the accessory collection which developed through a research and experimentation on the world of knots and the ancient family traditional of crochet. The different knotting techniques helped me to create the different shapes of the leather goods and their metal components. The knots became the skeleton, the supporting base of the leather good, of the shoes and their components, heels and uppers. In this project, I tried to support sustainability highlighting the hand made craftsmanship with handmade sewing and crochet and paying attention also on the bases on which all the handmade works were made: metal and wood supports.